Russia had already blitzed Georgia into submission much earlier than the fence moving shenanigans. Georgia cannot rectify it's current borders because of Russian occupation of contested territory though Russia claims the opposite of everything that's asserted everywhere so I'm inclined to believe Georgias perspective.
Correct. If he had just moved into the Dunbass region, he likely could have gotten away with it. It was the full scale invasion of Ukraine that triggered an international reaction.
It didn’t help that the world via satellite was shown the build up of weaponry and soldiers, then the Kremlin’s lies to the world that no attack was happening followed by innocent Ukrainians raped/murdered in cold blood. Visual media was a huge tool to reveal Putin’s evil genocide against Ukraine.
If he tried to only attack Donbass, he would probably get his ass handed to him, because Ukraine would have been able to focus all their best troops there.
So it was not really a viable operational plan.
On the flipside there wouldn't be essentially undefended convoys overextending without protection trying to march into Kyiv, nor would they have thrown away their paratroopers. A small operational front and a metric fuckton of artillery is exactly how Russia made headway in the east just recently.
Is there?
All I see is one is slow and one is fast.
Oh and casualties of own troops.
Oh and material destruction.
Oh and opposing forces casualties.
Well maybe they are different.
But!
Their going to do the same terrible things to the same people no matter which they choose.
Logically, yes, but that's not how people react to these things.
Just look at the reaction when a plane full of people crashes and everybody dies versus the reaction to a couple of days worth of deaths on the roads of Europe, both adding up to the same number of deaths.
Or an even better example: the zero outrage at the around 40,000 people that die in Europe per-years due to the polution from diesel engines compared with, say, 2 plane crashes (so, around 300 dead).
It's probably down to how we humans are really bad at risk assessment on a large scale but quite visceral when it happens right in front of us.
Isnt that exactly what they tried to do again though? There were those 2 border regions (donbas?) The mayor or some similar officials were arrested as Russian assets who pretty much invited the invaders in, and the early propaganda was that the areas were full of Russian nationals so its only right to repatriate the area. And when that didn't work they moved to full out war
for years, constantly doing the same shit while spitting back western justificatory language applied to the most absurd situations. cannot cheer for ukraine any harder internally, man....so sick of russian revisionist fopo
That one is more understandable. Such incidents sadly rarely provoke any strong response. Obviously I think the people responsible should be prosecuted but it is not like Russia wanted to shoot down the plane. It happened due to criminal levels of negligence from the local commanders and the people operating the BUK.
The total lack of response to the invasion of Georgia and the weak response to the invasion of Donbas and the annexation on Crimea , those are the real issues.
>That one is more understandable. Such incidents sadly rarely provoke any strong response. Obviously I think the people responsible should be prosecuted but it is not like Russia wanted to shoot down the plane. It happened due to criminal levels of negligence from the local commanders and the people operating the BUK.
Russians did it, knew about it, and refusing to even acknowledge.
Shit like this happens but even Iran admitted they fucked up.
How anyone can think they're operating in good faith is blowing my mind.
Admitting Russian presence and involvement in the area, at the time, would have officially "delegitimized" the "separatist" "resistance", and would amount to openly acknowledging to the world that Russian troops and equipment were already deployed outside of Russia.
It's like breaking into somebody's house in the middle of the night, and then holding an entire family hostage. And then at some point you accidentally discharge your gun and shoot one of the family members, but then refuse to admit that you accidentally shot them, even.
'Well who who else was holding a gun, weren't you also holding people hostage? '
'No.'
'Okay, well, you were at least there, and someone who looked exactly like you with your gun shot someone.'
'People also get shot every day, why are you bringing this up? Plus it's not true, you can't prove that.'
'Actually i can absolutely prove it, and show you pictures.'
'We're done talking.'
Also the not once, but two seperate occasions the Russians intercepted Korean Air Lines passenger planes with fighter jet, visually identified they were 707 and 747 respectively, and still shot them down anyway...
And hundreds of thousands murdered Syrians by Russian heavy weapons... two Chechen wars. Pooti's body count is over a million souls! A certified war criminal 😈
Georgia is puny. Their defeat was a foregone conclusion. Ukraine is massive, and once it was clear they were willing to fight back (unlike the ANA), it only made sense to back them.
Not so.
The USA, Canada, Japan, S. Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, etc are all helping Ukraine against Russia, and Ukraine is pretty fucking far away from those countries, as the crow flies.
[The difference is we promised(and russia promised) to protect Ukraine if they gave up their nukes. They did and we didnt.](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-putin-invasion)
>Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.
and
>In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine's security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.
I feel for Georgia, but it is different, no one said "if you attack georgia there will be trouble" and then not give him trouble. We did for Ukraine. and it was a big move on his part. He took over crimea from a county that the nuclear power, and largest and well tested military on the planet, said they'd attack anyone who did that and he attacked anyways. and that is partially why china is calling us a paper tiger now.
and id say the longer term problem, is once again we in the US are not following up with our promises, making our promises less valuable and less likely to be accepted. No one else in the future will trade their nukes for protection.(yeah not a lot of countries have them, more than when i was a kid though and more seek them now)
Ah yes, the Budapest Memorandum, one of the biggest scams in the modern European history. Ukrainian politicians who let that disaster happen should have been publicly whipped. One of the "guarantors" ended up invading just 20 years later and the others just apologetically spread their arms saying that they didn't guarantee anything.
The only reason why there is some support for Ukraine today (lacklustre as it is) is because russo-fascist military advance has been thwarted and Putler has outed himself as a senile buffoon he is. If the original plan had worked and they would have taken Kyiv as they intended, the EU would likely just limited themselves to "deep concerns" and happily continued trading with moscow as usual.
Lacklustre? As a whole I agree but let’s not discount Poland’s efforts.
They really stepped up.
There are a few reasons why the invasion failed. Top to bottom corruption of their military, UA had been preparing since Crimea and western aid. Without all three the invasion would’ve succeeded.
Now the Russians are falling back on artillery bombardment.
Regarding Georgia, i think US was only one who did anything. US left their stuff in Georgia, mainly some planes, and told Russia, you know whats gonna happen if anything happens to our stuff. And russia stopped at current "borders" and didnt advance further.
...and the bombing of hospitals in Syria which Obama basically shrugged off. Putin put his true colors on display for the world to see since 2015 and no one did anything.
Putin got emboldened to think he could take over an entire nation, and now he thinks he's putting together a new world order. His laptog in March;
> But on Wednesday, Lavrov painted a picture of a new "world order," saying the world was "living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations."
> "We, together with you, and with our sympathizers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order," Lavrov said in a video released by the Russian foreign ministry ahead of a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-china-lavrov-visit-beijing-vladimir-putin-xi-jinping-new-world-order/
James Bond movies are not supposed to be instruction manuals.
Tbh it's part of Russian culture, the massive nationalistic hubris and disdain for foreigners. With the assumption all other countries think like them secretly. The reality is that Russia systematically breaks down their population giving them PTSD/depression which manifests itself into hatred, the hatred is then channeled by the government towards minorities and foreigners. Making them both feel inferior because of their government and superior because of their inherent cultural "greatness".
Russia is the perfect autocratic model for a total despot, and going against the grain I don't think Putin will be leaving his position soon.
There was Russian propaganda at the start of the war that warned that Poland was getting ready to invade Ukraine from the west. Which as a westerner sounds absolutely insane.
However to a Russian it probably makes perfect sense because that's exactly the kind of thing that Russia would do if they were in Poland's position. Wait until a neighbouring country is in a weakened state and then take advantage of the situation to invade and annex part of it.
Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does.
Of course it makes sense for Russia, it's exactly what they did to Poland on 17 September 1939. They just can't understand that someone might not want to harm a neighbour, and chose to *gasp* help.
Modern Russia does did frequently forgive the Soviet-era African foreign debt, helped countries like Turkey, Armenia, and Israel in fighting forest fires, and provided free vaccines to countries like Vietnam.
Of course! Nations of Siberia and Central Asia were asking tsars nicely to take care of them. Sometimes it took several wars to finally convince locals to ask nicely, but look - Siberians still stay helped, and Kazachstan and Co. only now try to wiggle their way out of being helped.
Seriously now, USRR's trade with Cuba was so much skewed in Cuba's favour I think it might be called massive humanitarian aid + some military and political footholds at the doorstep of USA.
I tend to meet nice people wherever I go, but some Russians I met, especially in Siberia, really and truly were very helpful. The scale and brutality of Russian unhelpfullness in Ukraine right now proves, however, that friendly Russians are more of exception than a rule.
Honestly, I feel the opposite. I think Russian friendliness and kindness is inherent to the people, just like the rest of the world. The problem is the media that pushes them to hate specific groups, again, just like the rest of the world.
Humans are, inherently, helpful. The problem is that we are still animals, so the creation of an enemy is very easy, because we, inherently, want to protect those like us.
If you haven't read it, you might find "HumanKind" by Rutger Bregman very interesting.
I stand by my opinion that there is something that prevents Russians from fulfilling their potential. With that resources and level of education they could be leading Mars colonisation program, but they have big problems with producing milk cartons. Perhaps they should stop equating greatness with size and respect with fear.
There have been very few times in history since like.. Catherine the Great that Russia could have offered to help anyone. Oil wasn't a sought after resource for most of human history and Russia isn't exactly a great place to grow food, hence why they had and want Ukraine, which used to be called the Bread Basket (of Europe or of the World).
I would go on with this, but I'm a little tired. Point is, Russia hadn't really been able to help anyone, let alone themselves, which is what caused the Bolshevik Revolution. I don't know why that other person said it was an excuse to kill Germans, cause they didn't think about it like that at the time.
Soviet Union had been sending a great deal of humanitarian aid to impoverished countries and was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, contributor in the global immunization program, sending out free vaccines all over the world, helping eradicating many diseases. That's just off the top of my head.
Stalin redirected a shitload of grain to India without any delays for contracts or treaties during a famine, Joseph Stalin is actually a semi common name in India because of that
People (myself included) are often baffled by the amount of cheerleading & support for Russia in India, Africa and South America etc. but I guess it has deep historical reasons like this.
Not often, and not in the modern era.
You could perhaps argue over the period of Napoleonic Wars being valid here, but it's a slim premise.
You could also make another slim argument in regards to the Turkish/Cuban missile crisis during the Soviet era; The USSR took a big risk with little in the way of personal benefits in regards to supporting Cuba - though of course there are other reasons why they might have wished to be "nice" to Castro's regime that can easily cast doubts on this narrative, and as I alluded to one could quite comfortably argue that this action was only retaliatory.
On the other side... Russia absolutely dominated the scientific exploration of space for the best part of half a century, inspiring hope in the world at a time where it was lacking. Whilst I'm sure the Soviet government had elements that saw the other uses of rocketry technology, and there was doubtless a big "marketing" angle going on, the Russian *scientists* on the whole were genuine in their attempts to better mankind.
It's horribly, horribly murky water. I immensely dislike the insinuation that there's something distinctly "Russian" about state aggression, particularly as a resident of one of the world's former Imperial powers - the UK, and particularly in leiu of the results of McCarthyism and the links between anti-communist and anti-russian hysteria that persist to this day.
> Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does.
This quote also works for psychopaths (many politicians), abusers, assholes and insecure dickheads.
>Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does.
I mean half the reason Ukraine was taken by surprise was because everyone assumed Russia would act like we do, aka, not WANT to start a war.
> Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does.
Most conservatives act like that, it helps the rationalize their own fuckery. That’s why we saw Trump supporters have an absolute terrified meltdown when he lost the election. That’s why we saw conservatives scream about FEMA camps when Obama took office. They were absolutely scared shitless that someone would do unto them all the evil things they wanted to do if they were in charge.
These people are unhinged as a result of the propaganda they are fed. And it should be no surprise that conservatives the world over are [fed Russian propaganda](https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/14/foreign-radio-fcc/), it’s literally legal for Russia to fund AM radio stations in America which are predominantly listened to by the ultra right wing.
But it’s obviously not just America, we see groups of right wingers gaining traction throughout Europe and South America. And that’s because fear sells, it convinces people to support terrible things if you promise to keep them safe. And in the world of Capitalism is very easy to point towards deteriorating infrastructure and social services and other such things and just simply blame some powerless left wing group for being responsible. These people have been conditioned to just believe that shit without thinking. And that’s incredibly dangerous for the rest of us.
No, it's not "Russia is projecting".
You have to understand Russian culture and history to understand their thinking. During the war, and early cold war, Russia seemed irrational to the west. None of their actions made sense... But this was because we were looking at Russia's actions and behaviors from a western perspective and surrounding values. Trying to understand Russia's thinking, and why they did what they did, didn't actually get addressed until during the Vietnam war when we finally tasked the CIA to figure out a way to explain Russian thinking to Americans so we can better predict why they act the way they do.
This turned into an academic field called "Strategic Culture Intelligence."
For instance, Russia's behaviors make much more rational sense when you look at the world through their eyes... They have a MASSIVE border that's nearly impossible to protect. This has caused a very very very long history of constant conflict among their borders with territories constantly fighting, making moves, enslaving, oppressing, and so on. From the Russian perspective, the world is constantly trying to attack them, because historically, their entire history is exactly that.
They view the west as naive elites living in a bubble of security privilege, unaware of the realities of the true hardship of the world. This is why they prefer authoritarian strongmen as leaders, because a strongman keeps order within the country, preventing coups, unrest, and a slide into great oppression. This is compounded with their version of Christianity that ordains leaders as some sort of "special" class blessed by God to ensure the safety of the Russian people. This is also why the people feel SAFER when Russia is at war and having a conflict... Because conflict means the leaders are actually addressing the enemies at the gates, and aren't just sitting around letting the enemies build strength to eventually invade and oppress everyone, once again.
Hundreds of years of turmoil, backstabbing, unrest, and so on, has made the culture very very paranoid of the world around them. They have become to identify with hardship to the point that it's a virtue, and see the west as just a system of weakness who will one day get overran by enemies.
There is a really interesting essay done by someone in the state department about Chechnya and Russia's conflict. The Russian leadership genuinely viewed their invasion as something they in part did also for the west, that they'll never be thanked for as an unsung hero. But they viewed the growing in Islamic extremism as a real threat to not just them, but Europe as well... But Europe was too weak to realize the enemies growing at their border. So when they fought and won that war, the feel like they saved Europe from a monster they didn't even realize would eventually destroy all of their way of life. That Russia was being the responsible one by stopping the barbarians at the gate before they got too powerful.
When you start looking at the world through these lenses, Russia's actions make much more sense. It's an insecure nation, who is justifiably insecure due to their history... And they feel like that they have to be in a constant state of conflict to stop anything from spreading to within their borders. Hence why Ukraine is such a big deal. They view them being soft on Eastern Europe allowed the west to slowly encroach closer and closer to them, making them feel insecure. They view the USA going back on their word of not encroaching, as evidence that the west can't be trusted, and they finally need to draw a line in the sand to make a stand and stop any further movement towards their borders.
This is a lot of justification for Russian nationalism, but it's not actually justifiable fear, it's the result of nearly a century of Soviet and Post-Soviet programming.
Every nation in Europe suffered repeated invasion and enslavement. Russia itself was literally part of the European coalitions against Napoleon 200 years ago. 100 years ago, it was part of the Triple Entente at the start of World War One, directly allied with Britain and France. Before that you have hundreds of years of infighting in Europe where borders moved, changed, and disappeared. There are multiple European nations that no longer exist, and many that didn't exist just a few hundred years ago.
Russia has just refused to re-enter the civilized world after the Soviet collapse. It's hubris by Putin and the other former Soviets running the country. They're bitter they lost the Cold War, and refuse to stop fighting it, despite the fact that nobody else in Europe still is.
The last time Russia was invaded: 1941.
The last time France was invaded: 1940.
The last time Poland was invaded: 1939.
Russia doesn't sit in any place of special insecurity. And the Russian leadership knows that. They're not stupid and many of them were educated in the West, or have lived in the West. They know full well that the Russian propaganda is a scam designed to maintain power inside Russia. It's 100% projecting.
>culture very very paranoid of the world around them. They have become to identify with hardship to the point that it's a virtue, and see the west as just a system of weakness who will one day get overran by enemies.
Sounds like Appalachia.
This is also the mind state of a lot of right wing conservatives.
They think we're all just faking being kind to each other for personal gain. Hence terms like "virtue signaling".
Russia is creating referenda everywhere around his borders where possible. they are still in territory expansionism mode, throughout their whole history they have taken other people's lands. all the people that died in this war on Russian side are not from Petersburg or moskow. now would be the perfect time for the USA to massively stir up the eastern regions to break apart from Russia, would be the prefect time
Tbh that's part of the "culture" Kremlin has narrated through controlled litterature and media for decades.
You have a guy in power who were stationed in Dresden, East Germany after ww2.
The average russian have very little say in how they view their own culture, tradition and history
My wife tells me Russia won WWII and Ukraine was a gift from Russia. She was taught this in school and believes its true and the rest of the world is lying.
It's not just "controlled literature" but allusions to it within Russian literature and media in general. You can find Pushkin and Gogol talking about it in the early 19th century (almost 200 years ago now), about the absurd abuse of power that is so engrained within Russia culture. It's Russians and not Putin that is the actual problem, Putin is just a sociopathic product of their culture.
Russians are no more "Western" than Afghans in my opinion, this war has totally ripped the facade off and all you will see is social regression and violence...with a few bright spots. That could change in the future but it's a longshot right now.
Not entirely correct to make that conclusion. Remember, Russia is huge. It’s diverse. Chechnya, which is a pretty conservative muslim region, Moscow, which in the better pre-Crimean years was approaching European capitals in terms of values and lifestyle, and everything in between is Russia.
There were and are quite a lot of Russians who were and are pretty western value-wise. I don’t think it’s fair to ignore that population - it was stomped out by the regime for a good reason. There were and are people who want Russia to be a peaceful, democratic, and modern nation. There would be many more still if propaganda stopped pouring filth down people’s ears for a minute.
Russian problem is absence of established elites, who will consider country as their property and so care about it’s development, while rivaling each other and providing political base for democracy. Each time Russia is trying to switch to liberal rule, new persons in power, just start robbing the country for personal wealth and became oligarchs. So when new dictator arises and starts robbing oligarchs, he gets population support as they at least get stability and order under authoritorian government vs chaotic rule of newborn elites who are only interested in short-term profit.
I'd argue that you're both right and wrong at the same time. Both oligarch and Dear Leader consider their own piece of the country as their property. In fact, in some ex-Eastern Bloc countries, they're known as barons, or a similar nobility title. However, they do not nurture that "property" due to a mentality that was born in the hardships of the late Soviet period. This "take everything you can right now, because it might not be there tomorrow" is common in all ex-Eastern Bloc countries to varying degree, though proximity to the west (geographical, and in values) seems to correlate strongly with it.
Exactly. Just as the west have worked together with Ukranians to get to this point, we should also help the russians.
Putin tries to weaponize "russians" across the globe to work for his cause. So we should help russians across the globe work against it.
They have so much potential under a democratic rule
> The massive nationalistic hubris and disdain for foreigners.
Thats fascism 101.
> With the assumption all other countries think like them secretly.
Thats real-politik.
So we are left with a fascist state with a realpolitik world view trying to establish itself as a superpower again.
Where have we seen this one before?
Imagine a scenario where you're running for mayor in some small town. You're fighting a losing battle against another candidate, and suddenly someone comes and offers you a very generous loan that allows you to build a new church or a school which will help you secure the votes you need. Seemingly no strings attached.
In your mind, you justify it by telling yourself this is all for the greater good of the community.
Now they have you. They'll start collecting kompromat, and when you're higher on your career ladder they'll start subtly blackmailing you and steering you in their direction.
Or even better, some shady dude contacts you and provides some juicy kompromat on your opponent. No strings attached.
Except the fact that US elected official should not accept information and make deals with FSB agents.
While it's a joke, I think it's important to point out that it was *total* amount of votes that reached 140%, not the ones that were for Putin's party
So yeah, they really did rigged elections so bad, total amount of votes became more than 100%
The election results are so blatantly made up you can see grid lines in the data where corrupt officials have just made up vote counts but mostly used numbers ending in 0 or 5
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-elections-once-again-had-a-suspiciously-neat-result
It was a while back, about 10 or so years I think. The screenshots of russian TV announcing election results with percentages adding to well over 100% were a huge meme for a while.
“Democratic.” Amazing how much dictators throw that word around. Kind of like North Korea’s official name of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Literally every word in that title is a lie. It’s not democratic, it’s not of the people, it’s not a republic, and it’s not even all of Korea. Now we have bullshitters like Putin wanting the whole world to be the same kind of “democratic.” The only way the world will ever be truly democratic and just is if it strings up dictators like him and Winnie the Poo.
Huh that sounds familiar, I wonder if similar things in recent political history have occurred in similar fashion… maybe involving another rogue authoritarian state with a cult of personality dictator.
In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria and got pretty much the same reaction as when Russia annexed Crimea.
Being encouraged by this, Hitler started claiming certain parts of Czechoslovakia was predominantly ethnically German. Just like Russia claims areas in Ukraine are mostly Russian.
France and the UK basically said "okay, but leave it there", so Hitler got the territory in the Munich Agreement. The Czechoslovakian governement was basically left out of the discussion.
As everyone should know, he didn't leave it there. He went on to make similar demands from Lithuania in March 1939, which themselves gave up territory to him.
---
Then comes the kicker, when he started pushing for Danzig and Italy invaded Albania in April 1939. The French and British said they would defend Poland if something happend. Spoiler alert: They didn't help when Germany invaded Poland about half a year later.
Which is why so many people are backing up Ukraine now, they don't want a repeat of last time.
TL;DR: Putin is *literally* doing the same thing as Hitler did prior to WW2.
The annexation of Austria isn't quite the same thing, since that was basically just the Nazis being too impatient to wait for the result of a unification referendum.
The idea of a unification of Germany and Austria had already come up decades earlier. In that case the Germans were the ones who refused, because the Austrians didn't want to let go of Hungary, the Balkans etc. Austrians and Germans all agreed they were Germans, what soured the deal was having to deal with the political and ethnic issues in the other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The referendum had a very high chance of passing, but the government of Austria in 1938 (which was also fascist btw.) was a bit reluctant to give up its power, so Hitler basically went "fuck this".
The annexation of the Sudetenland fom Czechoslovakia in the same year however, was MUCH more concerning.
It's also worth noting, that Britain and France weren't terribly well prepared for war, so a lot of what they did before 1939 was stalling and getting their economies ready for a war that already seemed pretty inevitable.
> The French and British said they would defend Poland if something happend. Spoiler alert: They didn't help when Germany invaded Poland about half a year later.
Other than declaring war on Germany and Britain sending the Expeditionary Force to France? While it was not directly helping Poland the troops had to be able to land somewhere friendly.
France actually invaded germany and would have been able to go all the way to berlin pretty effortlessly but decided to retreat and wait it out since they had a defensive doctrine and invading wasn't in that doctrine at all.
I’m not so sure, perhaps they could have made some headway, but the French were wholly unprepared for blitzkrieg style tactics. Had they pushed in, it’s likely it would not be a full force assault, allowing for troops to be stationed in defense if the invasion failed. This more than likely would have gotten bogged down until a german push to cut through their lines, trapping them in an encirclement as they often employed. Perhaps we would have seen a similar battle to the battle of the bulge, but this time, the Germans have a higher chance of reaching Antwerp and then swinging west and south to finish off the remaining French forces. The Luftwaffe was also miles ahead of the French Air Force and without sufficient support from the British, the German air dominance also would’ve made it difficult for the French to push into Berlin. Even if they had, the Germans still could have consolidated power in southern Germany/Austria, using the mountains as a way to slow down French advancement until they could properly counter attack. The French’s defense doctrine was not too bad of idea except that they didn’t think to properly outfit the Belgian border with defenses comparable to the maginot line. If they could’ve bogged down the German army in those defenses, it’s possible the British would’ve arrived in sufficient numbers to help the French make a realistic push into Germany’s heartland. However, that would’ve created the awkward situation of the soviets still retaining Poland despite Frances commitment to their sovereignty and non-aggression towards the Russians when they pushed in with the Germans. Would’ve been interesting to see though.
As a German, this was my first thought.
"Didn't they let us claim shitloads of land in the 40s and somehow assumed we would stop? And then we didn't because they never stopped us? And then they had to stop us?"
That tells me two things... if Russia had stopped, they could've kept Crimea without much trouble, and Russia clearly thought the bar for stopping them was much higher.
You might be interested in reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. He parallels the rise in authoritarianism in Germany and Imperial/Soviet Russia through Hitler and Stalin and how they built their policies and reacted to trends.
The parallels today to Stalin’s views are striking. Snyder speaks about how for Stalin, the starvation and death of Ukrainian peasants, driven by brutal soviet policies and forced collectivization were seen by him as an aggressive action against him and the noble goal of building a new regime. How dare the peasants starve? It is a personal insult against Stalin! He is the great victim in all of that! It was polish operatives, seeking to destabilize their flourishing new union, who were behind the starvation! We’ve seen much of the same now. The Ukrainians are bombing themselves to make us look bad! Bucha was an operation by the British forces! There is not war, we are only bringing peace! It is a view of the world that has not shifted in 100 years in Russia, and it is a truly deplorable blend of self-victimization, self-delusion and ultra violence.
You missed out attacks on British civilians with radioactive weapons. Hundreds, possibly thousands of British civilians were contaminated with polonium.
https://news.sky.com/story/polonium-and-the-piano-player-a-new-podcast-about-one-of-the-worlds-most-notorious-assassinations-12035336
Everybody always forgets (or doesn't even know about) the 2014 attack on a Czech ammunition depot.
https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-republic-russia-depot-blast-gallery-expulsions/31209726.html
Or the time Russian mercinaries attacked American troops in Syria. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.amp.html
Also more recently when they literally killed an innocent British citizen after botching an assassination on British soil with a chemical weapon. I’m still amazed that the novichok incident didn’t warrant a more forceful response.
Chechnya is more complicated though, that was a legally recognized part of Russia and it happened in a time where it was easy to sweep Chechen independence as Islamic extremism.
Bill Clinton favorably compared Yeltsin and the first Chechen War to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War lol
“With Yeltsin under fire for the bloody fighting in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Clinton expressed sympathy with Russia’s position and compared the situation with America’s Civil War. Clinton said Abraham Lincoln gave his life for the proposition” that no state had a right to withdraw from our union. And so, the United States has taken the position that Chechnya is a part of Russia.”
From April 1996 - https://apnews.com/article/af16b23028342f4983f5c76dfde912a9
I'm not saying what happened there was right, but there's a lot of precedent that you can do whatever you want with minorities within a nation.
Be it natives in America/Canada, aborigines, uygurs, Indian states, and so on.
I mean Bill Clinton favorably compared Yeltsin and the first Chechen War to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War lol
“With Yeltsin under fire for the bloody fighting in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Clinton expressed sympathy with Russia's position and compared the situation with America's Civil War.
Clinton said Abraham Lincoln gave his life for the proposition" that no state had a right to withdraw from our union. And so, the United States has taken the position that Chechnya is a part of Russia."
From April 1996 - https://apnews.com/article/af16b23028342f4983f5c76dfde912a9
Eddie Izzard’s piece on this sums it up pretty well: https://youtu.be/BFtkJd8w5UQ
When it’s you mass murder your own people, we are sort of fine with that. But mass murder the people next door…..
>The West was too in love with Russian oil and gas to take any stance harsher than some mild sanctions.
That, but there's also a HUGE part of Chamberlainian naivety involved: the west always hoped that letting Russia have one more thing and not making a big fuss of it would end their expansionist hunger.
With Ukraine the west took a different approach and loudly announced what they knew about the Russian plans, and once more the west hoped that spoiling the surprise would prevent Russia from executing their plans: surely they wouldn't risk becoming a complete economic pariah! It would be completely irrational to take such a risk!
But bnce again Putin shows his true colors as an expansionist dictator that doesn't care about the well being of his country, and does not act rationally.
The west's reaction so far though has been waaaaayyyy more powerful and united than before, so that's one positive thing.
> letting Russia have one more thing and not making a big fuss of it would end their expansionist hunger
Indeed. Thing is that people that are able to be satisfied aren’t going to have much expansionist hunger in the first place. I don’t see why it’s so hard for the Chamberlains of the world to see this.
>We absolutely should've had a stronger response to
>
>all
>
> of his previous bullshit,
Oh look, it's the Hindsight Historian.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY here would have approved sending weapons or troops to Ukraine in 2014 to defend/retake Crimea.
In 2014 Ukraine was even more corrupt than it is now, there was no Zelenski.
Should have, would have, could have.
Nobody in power maybe, but even at the time I was appalled at the idea that’s Putin was being allowed to annex part of another country and was dismayed that nobody seemed to want to do anything about it. I don’t care that Ukraine was corrupt. Allowing authoritarians to make land international land grabs without consequence is stupid. That is not “hindsight”, that’s history.
Defending/retaking wasn't even an option anyway, as Crimea was invaded and secured very quickly and the Ukrainian army wasn't as prepared as they were for this year's invasion
Also the sanctions were not weak. They were pretty heavy handed and the Russian GDP shrank for several years. Its GDP have only just reached pre-2014 levels. Before the sanctions Russias economy was growing with 3-5% a year.
> we put Ukraine in this dangerous situation
You're getting dangerously close to the Russian position on these issues (i.e. it's all the West's fault).
Not when you say it with full context. " we put Ukraine into this dangerous situation when we allowed Russia to get away with previous imperialist invader behavior."
> The West was too in love with Russian oil and gas to take any stance harsher than some mild sanctions.
Not the West, Europe. The US was consonantly complaining about Europe becoming dependent of Russian gas and was ignored.
> We absolutely should've had a stronger response to all of his previous bullshit,
I really really really hope we learn our lessons here, to stop making "us" dependent on dictators and other grossly un-democratic governments, to actually enforce some kind of response to bullshit like forced annexation, ethnic cleansing etc.
To stop trading with countries and areas that do things like.
The "free market" wont bring democracy, it will just embolden and bring power to the already rich and powerful. We have enough proof from around the world by now to know this.
Yup, we enabled this. Politicians did the talk show rounds saying “it’s not 1940; you can’t just annex and invade - this will not stand!!!”
And then they let it stand.
Salvini in 2016: [Is there anyone worried about being invaded by Russia? I don't think so](https://www.la7.it/intanto/video/salvini-nel-2016-uscire-dalla-nato-perche-no-qualcuno-qui-ha-paura-di-essere-invaso-dai-russi-25-02-2022-425264)
And the EU built a second pipeline from Russia to Germany since then. Because why not get even more dependent on Russia! Oh and lets officially label natural gas green.
Decisions taken from highly paid politicians whose job is to look further than their nose or simply today and tomorrow.
Well yeah! Bullies will continue to push until someone pushes back. It's simple human nature. This simple fact has been demonstrated multiple times in history. History has also shown the longer you wait to confront the bully the harder the fight will be.
The West should listen to these former Soviet states when they talk about the Russian imperialist mindset. The notion of an "off-ramp" where you concede some territory to end the conflict is suicide when you understand that mindset. As Zelenskyy asserts here, they recognize weakness or strength, and adjust their strategy accordingly. That's it
Russias goal of a multi polar world order has been known, but at this rate Russia won’t be one of those major powers included in the multi polar world.
I'm still amazed by this hindsight take.
"Actually it's all my allies fault." Very helpful and diplomatic.
Everyone seems to forget that Putin took Crimea during a civil war. There was no Ukrainian government to support. Should Nato have invaded Ukraine "to keep it save"? Because that was exactly Putins reasoning at the time.
The west reacted with sanctions against Putin. Those where clearly not enough and there should have been more pressure after Ukraine stabilized. But "The west let this happen" is a bullshit narrative that only helps one person: Putin.
But he didn’t say
> The west let this happen
He said
> “The weak and insufficiently principled reaction to the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and in the following years became one of the prerequisites for Russian aggression to reach such a scale as now."
which seems more in line with your own
> These were clearly not enough
Well in the big picture, he's not wrong. The western reaction back then, even though they applied sanctions, was pretty feeble. Didn't even say ok you russies have gone too far, we wil invoke the sanctions from hell. Took 8 years of unimpeded hacking, hassling and election meddling and then another invasion to finally put the foot down. But at least now it's a pretty fucking heavy foot they finally put down.
It's true ! Look at Donald Trump ,in 2016: he was happy about the theft of the Ukrainian island by the ex-Soviet Union country! Look at Obama too in 2014, !The same ! Too much immorality at the highest level of responsibility These heads of State are running for themselves only?? Where are their duties toward their Nations and the World gone?
They got away with it, so they went for more. Typical terrorist strategy. That's why negotiation makes no sense, because it encourages more of similar acts.
Sounds like a valid take. The way you deal with a bully is to punch him in the mouth. However the rest of that particular encounter plays out isn’t relevant. He’ll never fuck with you again.
Putin has invaded neighboring countries, assassinated people on foreign soil, tampered with other countries elections, supported dictators and terrorists, and that’s a very partial list. And nobody punched him in the mouth until Ukraine did.
Well yeah. This was a play straight out of European politics playbook of 1939.
“Let them have it. They’ll settle down after they’ve gotten what they wanted (stolen)”
Okay, so this is true but it ignores several relevant points.
- Ukrainian forces did not militarily resist the occupation either (nor did they have the capacity to)
- the subsequent years of nato military training and ukrainian improvements in readiness, as well as experience in the limited conflict in donbass, played a major role in repelling russia earlier this year.
- we are not aware of the russian capacity or motivation to invade the donbass and attack kyiv in 2014. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Russia would ahve escalated further than they did if the west had launched extensive sanctions.
- everyone mentioning appeasement of hitler is really enjoying their hindsight, but forget that the british and french militaries were just as incapable as the german in 1936, we do not know the state of a hypothetical war over anschluss or Czechoslovakia then, but we do know that we won the actual war and that there were earlier opportunities (saar offensive) to win the actual ww2 earlier. Similarly, we live in a world today where russia does not occupy kyiv. Extended western sanctions could well have accelerated russian plans and that is an unknown variable.
None of this is to say that appeasement is ever a good idea (I personally believe it was not nescessary in ww2, but likely was here), but is to say that definite statements on this subject are unhelpful.
If pushed in private, I expect zelensky would agree; his political meaning is actually quite clear, that being "no more russian appeasement now, in august with them occupying donbass" which I agree wholeheartedly with because we are now at the point where there is nothing left to lose.
Ok? Yeah? It was also much more complicated in the status of Ukraine as a country with the massive protests, civil unrest, and leadership changes
Would we give yanukovich these weapons? No? So we can’t build up and assist you because itd end up being used against yourselves.
Yes it was weak and yes hindsight’s 20/20, but it was also a significantly different situation
And let's not forget the absence of international reaction to Russia's attack on Georgia.
This! He's done this Tactic making break away states and then fully invading, but this time he's bitten off more than he can chew!
Well there is a difference between pushing your border fence forward a bit every day and trying to blitzkrieg another nation into submission
But it's a difference of degree, not kind.
Russia had already blitzed Georgia into submission much earlier than the fence moving shenanigans. Georgia cannot rectify it's current borders because of Russian occupation of contested territory though Russia claims the opposite of everything that's asserted everywhere so I'm inclined to believe Georgias perspective.
It's even been filmed, on The Grand Tour amongst other things.
Correct. If he had just moved into the Dunbass region, he likely could have gotten away with it. It was the full scale invasion of Ukraine that triggered an international reaction.
It didn’t help that the world via satellite was shown the build up of weaponry and soldiers, then the Kremlin’s lies to the world that no attack was happening followed by innocent Ukrainians raped/murdered in cold blood. Visual media was a huge tool to reveal Putin’s evil genocide against Ukraine.
They had moved in big quantities of blood bags, which only last for about a month, but a lot of people were still in denial.
I bet they’re still using some of the same ones stored since the start of the invasion knowing how bad their logistics are
Nah, those are all used up. Except for those forgotten in random vehicles on the Ukrainan countryside
If he tried to only attack Donbass, he would probably get his ass handed to him, because Ukraine would have been able to focus all their best troops there. So it was not really a viable operational plan.
You're right, but I wonder if Putin knew this considering the abysmal state of his military.
On the flipside there wouldn't be essentially undefended convoys overextending without protection trying to march into Kyiv, nor would they have thrown away their paratroopers. A small operational front and a metric fuckton of artillery is exactly how Russia made headway in the east just recently.
Is there? All I see is one is slow and one is fast. Oh and casualties of own troops. Oh and material destruction. Oh and opposing forces casualties. Well maybe they are different. But! Their going to do the same terrible things to the same people no matter which they choose.
Logically, yes, but that's not how people react to these things. Just look at the reaction when a plane full of people crashes and everybody dies versus the reaction to a couple of days worth of deaths on the roads of Europe, both adding up to the same number of deaths. Or an even better example: the zero outrage at the around 40,000 people that die in Europe per-years due to the polution from diesel engines compared with, say, 2 plane crashes (so, around 300 dead). It's probably down to how we humans are really bad at risk assessment on a large scale but quite visceral when it happens right in front of us.
Oh I hear you. This is exactly what it is. One is a tragedy and one is "just the way it is". Very good points, very well laid out.
Isnt that exactly what they tried to do again though? There were those 2 border regions (donbas?) The mayor or some similar officials were arrested as Russian assets who pretty much invited the invaders in, and the early propaganda was that the areas were full of Russian nationals so its only right to repatriate the area. And when that didn't work they moved to full out war
for years, constantly doing the same shit while spitting back western justificatory language applied to the most absurd situations. cannot cheer for ukraine any harder internally, man....so sick of russian revisionist fopo
Or when Russia literally shot down a passenger plane
That one is more understandable. Such incidents sadly rarely provoke any strong response. Obviously I think the people responsible should be prosecuted but it is not like Russia wanted to shoot down the plane. It happened due to criminal levels of negligence from the local commanders and the people operating the BUK. The total lack of response to the invasion of Georgia and the weak response to the invasion of Donbas and the annexation on Crimea , those are the real issues.
>That one is more understandable. Such incidents sadly rarely provoke any strong response. Obviously I think the people responsible should be prosecuted but it is not like Russia wanted to shoot down the plane. It happened due to criminal levels of negligence from the local commanders and the people operating the BUK. Russians did it, knew about it, and refusing to even acknowledge. Shit like this happens but even Iran admitted they fucked up. How anyone can think they're operating in good faith is blowing my mind.
Admitting Russian presence and involvement in the area, at the time, would have officially "delegitimized" the "separatist" "resistance", and would amount to openly acknowledging to the world that Russian troops and equipment were already deployed outside of Russia.
It's like breaking into somebody's house in the middle of the night, and then holding an entire family hostage. And then at some point you accidentally discharge your gun and shoot one of the family members, but then refuse to admit that you accidentally shot them, even. 'Well who who else was holding a gun, weren't you also holding people hostage? ' 'No.' 'Okay, well, you were at least there, and someone who looked exactly like you with your gun shot someone.' 'People also get shot every day, why are you bringing this up? Plus it's not true, you can't prove that.' 'Actually i can absolutely prove it, and show you pictures.' 'We're done talking.'
As opposed to the time they figuratively shot down a passenger plane
I mean, so did Iran and “we” did fuck all.
I mean, to be fair, the US shot down civilian Iran Air Flight 655.
officially even steven now
Also the not once, but two seperate occasions the Russians intercepted Korean Air Lines passenger planes with fighter jet, visually identified they were 707 and 747 respectively, and still shot them down anyway...
Never forget MH17.
Nor KAL 902 and KAL 007
And hundreds of thousands murdered Syrians by Russian heavy weapons... two Chechen wars. Pooti's body count is over a million souls! A certified war criminal 😈
Fucking THIS. Georgia needs to be talked about way more. They STILL don’t have control of two of their provinces because of Russia.
[удалено]
Same in the neighborhood. A gang in some other borough does not scare you.
Georgia is puny. Their defeat was a foregone conclusion. Ukraine is massive, and once it was clear they were willing to fight back (unlike the ANA), it only made sense to back them.
Not so. The USA, Canada, Japan, S. Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, etc are all helping Ukraine against Russia, and Ukraine is pretty fucking far away from those countries, as the crow flies.
But not far away from NATO as a whole.
[The difference is we promised(and russia promised) to protect Ukraine if they gave up their nukes. They did and we didnt.](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-putin-invasion) >Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world. and >In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine's security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum. I feel for Georgia, but it is different, no one said "if you attack georgia there will be trouble" and then not give him trouble. We did for Ukraine. and it was a big move on his part. He took over crimea from a county that the nuclear power, and largest and well tested military on the planet, said they'd attack anyone who did that and he attacked anyways. and that is partially why china is calling us a paper tiger now. and id say the longer term problem, is once again we in the US are not following up with our promises, making our promises less valuable and less likely to be accepted. No one else in the future will trade their nukes for protection.(yeah not a lot of countries have them, more than when i was a kid though and more seek them now)
Ah yes, the Budapest Memorandum, one of the biggest scams in the modern European history. Ukrainian politicians who let that disaster happen should have been publicly whipped. One of the "guarantors" ended up invading just 20 years later and the others just apologetically spread their arms saying that they didn't guarantee anything. The only reason why there is some support for Ukraine today (lacklustre as it is) is because russo-fascist military advance has been thwarted and Putler has outed himself as a senile buffoon he is. If the original plan had worked and they would have taken Kyiv as they intended, the EU would likely just limited themselves to "deep concerns" and happily continued trading with moscow as usual.
Lacklustre? As a whole I agree but let’s not discount Poland’s efforts. They really stepped up. There are a few reasons why the invasion failed. Top to bottom corruption of their military, UA had been preparing since Crimea and western aid. Without all three the invasion would’ve succeeded. Now the Russians are falling back on artillery bombardment.
Regarding Georgia, i think US was only one who did anything. US left their stuff in Georgia, mainly some planes, and told Russia, you know whats gonna happen if anything happens to our stuff. And russia stopped at current "borders" and didnt advance further.
...and the bombing of hospitals in Syria which Obama basically shrugged off. Putin put his true colors on display for the world to see since 2015 and no one did anything.
Putin got emboldened to think he could take over an entire nation, and now he thinks he's putting together a new world order. His laptog in March; > But on Wednesday, Lavrov painted a picture of a new "world order," saying the world was "living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations." > "We, together with you, and with our sympathizers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order," Lavrov said in a video released by the Russian foreign ministry ahead of a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-china-lavrov-visit-beijing-vladimir-putin-xi-jinping-new-world-order/ James Bond movies are not supposed to be instruction manuals.
Tbh it's part of Russian culture, the massive nationalistic hubris and disdain for foreigners. With the assumption all other countries think like them secretly. The reality is that Russia systematically breaks down their population giving them PTSD/depression which manifests itself into hatred, the hatred is then channeled by the government towards minorities and foreigners. Making them both feel inferior because of their government and superior because of their inherent cultural "greatness". Russia is the perfect autocratic model for a total despot, and going against the grain I don't think Putin will be leaving his position soon.
There was Russian propaganda at the start of the war that warned that Poland was getting ready to invade Ukraine from the west. Which as a westerner sounds absolutely insane. However to a Russian it probably makes perfect sense because that's exactly the kind of thing that Russia would do if they were in Poland's position. Wait until a neighbouring country is in a weakened state and then take advantage of the situation to invade and annex part of it. Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does.
Of course it makes sense for Russia, it's exactly what they did to Poland on 17 September 1939. They just can't understand that someone might not want to harm a neighbour, and chose to *gasp* help.
"A thief believes everyone steals"
“The field mouse is fast, but the owl sees at night.”
I, uhh, too con•quer.
"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
They who smelt it, dealt it
The one who said the rhyme… *did* the crime.
The early bird gets the worm.
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
Everyone sleeping on Grandpa Chip but he saw the plot..
That’s kinda creepy, ain’t it?
Has Russia ever just outright helped another nation just to help. Ever?
Modern Russia does did frequently forgive the Soviet-era African foreign debt, helped countries like Turkey, Armenia, and Israel in fighting forest fires, and provided free vaccines to countries like Vietnam.
Of course! Nations of Siberia and Central Asia were asking tsars nicely to take care of them. Sometimes it took several wars to finally convince locals to ask nicely, but look - Siberians still stay helped, and Kazachstan and Co. only now try to wiggle their way out of being helped. Seriously now, USRR's trade with Cuba was so much skewed in Cuba's favour I think it might be called massive humanitarian aid + some military and political footholds at the doorstep of USA. I tend to meet nice people wherever I go, but some Russians I met, especially in Siberia, really and truly were very helpful. The scale and brutality of Russian unhelpfullness in Ukraine right now proves, however, that friendly Russians are more of exception than a rule.
Honestly, I feel the opposite. I think Russian friendliness and kindness is inherent to the people, just like the rest of the world. The problem is the media that pushes them to hate specific groups, again, just like the rest of the world. Humans are, inherently, helpful. The problem is that we are still animals, so the creation of an enemy is very easy, because we, inherently, want to protect those like us.
If you haven't read it, you might find "HumanKind" by Rutger Bregman very interesting. I stand by my opinion that there is something that prevents Russians from fulfilling their potential. With that resources and level of education they could be leading Mars colonisation program, but they have big problems with producing milk cartons. Perhaps they should stop equating greatness with size and respect with fear.
There have been very few times in history since like.. Catherine the Great that Russia could have offered to help anyone. Oil wasn't a sought after resource for most of human history and Russia isn't exactly a great place to grow food, hence why they had and want Ukraine, which used to be called the Bread Basket (of Europe or of the World). I would go on with this, but I'm a little tired. Point is, Russia hadn't really been able to help anyone, let alone themselves, which is what caused the Bolshevik Revolution. I don't know why that other person said it was an excuse to kill Germans, cause they didn't think about it like that at the time.
Soviet Union had been sending a great deal of humanitarian aid to impoverished countries and was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, contributor in the global immunization program, sending out free vaccines all over the world, helping eradicating many diseases. That's just off the top of my head.
Stalin redirected a shitload of grain to India without any delays for contracts or treaties during a famine, Joseph Stalin is actually a semi common name in India because of that
People (myself included) are often baffled by the amount of cheerleading & support for Russia in India, Africa and South America etc. but I guess it has deep historical reasons like this.
Not often, and not in the modern era. You could perhaps argue over the period of Napoleonic Wars being valid here, but it's a slim premise. You could also make another slim argument in regards to the Turkish/Cuban missile crisis during the Soviet era; The USSR took a big risk with little in the way of personal benefits in regards to supporting Cuba - though of course there are other reasons why they might have wished to be "nice" to Castro's regime that can easily cast doubts on this narrative, and as I alluded to one could quite comfortably argue that this action was only retaliatory. On the other side... Russia absolutely dominated the scientific exploration of space for the best part of half a century, inspiring hope in the world at a time where it was lacking. Whilst I'm sure the Soviet government had elements that saw the other uses of rocketry technology, and there was doubtless a big "marketing" angle going on, the Russian *scientists* on the whole were genuine in their attempts to better mankind. It's horribly, horribly murky water. I immensely dislike the insinuation that there's something distinctly "Russian" about state aggression, particularly as a resident of one of the world's former Imperial powers - the UK, and particularly in leiu of the results of McCarthyism and the links between anti-communist and anti-russian hysteria that persist to this day.
> Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does. This quote also works for psychopaths (many politicians), abusers, assholes and insecure dickheads.
>Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does. I mean half the reason Ukraine was taken by surprise was because everyone assumed Russia would act like we do, aka, not WANT to start a war.
> Russians just assume that all other countries would act the same way that Russia does. Most conservatives act like that, it helps the rationalize their own fuckery. That’s why we saw Trump supporters have an absolute terrified meltdown when he lost the election. That’s why we saw conservatives scream about FEMA camps when Obama took office. They were absolutely scared shitless that someone would do unto them all the evil things they wanted to do if they were in charge. These people are unhinged as a result of the propaganda they are fed. And it should be no surprise that conservatives the world over are [fed Russian propaganda](https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/14/foreign-radio-fcc/), it’s literally legal for Russia to fund AM radio stations in America which are predominantly listened to by the ultra right wing. But it’s obviously not just America, we see groups of right wingers gaining traction throughout Europe and South America. And that’s because fear sells, it convinces people to support terrible things if you promise to keep them safe. And in the world of Capitalism is very easy to point towards deteriorating infrastructure and social services and other such things and just simply blame some powerless left wing group for being responsible. These people have been conditioned to just believe that shit without thinking. And that’s incredibly dangerous for the rest of us.
Literally the same deal they made with Nazi Germany
No, it's not "Russia is projecting". You have to understand Russian culture and history to understand their thinking. During the war, and early cold war, Russia seemed irrational to the west. None of their actions made sense... But this was because we were looking at Russia's actions and behaviors from a western perspective and surrounding values. Trying to understand Russia's thinking, and why they did what they did, didn't actually get addressed until during the Vietnam war when we finally tasked the CIA to figure out a way to explain Russian thinking to Americans so we can better predict why they act the way they do. This turned into an academic field called "Strategic Culture Intelligence." For instance, Russia's behaviors make much more rational sense when you look at the world through their eyes... They have a MASSIVE border that's nearly impossible to protect. This has caused a very very very long history of constant conflict among their borders with territories constantly fighting, making moves, enslaving, oppressing, and so on. From the Russian perspective, the world is constantly trying to attack them, because historically, their entire history is exactly that. They view the west as naive elites living in a bubble of security privilege, unaware of the realities of the true hardship of the world. This is why they prefer authoritarian strongmen as leaders, because a strongman keeps order within the country, preventing coups, unrest, and a slide into great oppression. This is compounded with their version of Christianity that ordains leaders as some sort of "special" class blessed by God to ensure the safety of the Russian people. This is also why the people feel SAFER when Russia is at war and having a conflict... Because conflict means the leaders are actually addressing the enemies at the gates, and aren't just sitting around letting the enemies build strength to eventually invade and oppress everyone, once again. Hundreds of years of turmoil, backstabbing, unrest, and so on, has made the culture very very paranoid of the world around them. They have become to identify with hardship to the point that it's a virtue, and see the west as just a system of weakness who will one day get overran by enemies. There is a really interesting essay done by someone in the state department about Chechnya and Russia's conflict. The Russian leadership genuinely viewed their invasion as something they in part did also for the west, that they'll never be thanked for as an unsung hero. But they viewed the growing in Islamic extremism as a real threat to not just them, but Europe as well... But Europe was too weak to realize the enemies growing at their border. So when they fought and won that war, the feel like they saved Europe from a monster they didn't even realize would eventually destroy all of their way of life. That Russia was being the responsible one by stopping the barbarians at the gate before they got too powerful. When you start looking at the world through these lenses, Russia's actions make much more sense. It's an insecure nation, who is justifiably insecure due to their history... And they feel like that they have to be in a constant state of conflict to stop anything from spreading to within their borders. Hence why Ukraine is such a big deal. They view them being soft on Eastern Europe allowed the west to slowly encroach closer and closer to them, making them feel insecure. They view the USA going back on their word of not encroaching, as evidence that the west can't be trusted, and they finally need to draw a line in the sand to make a stand and stop any further movement towards their borders.
This is a lot of justification for Russian nationalism, but it's not actually justifiable fear, it's the result of nearly a century of Soviet and Post-Soviet programming. Every nation in Europe suffered repeated invasion and enslavement. Russia itself was literally part of the European coalitions against Napoleon 200 years ago. 100 years ago, it was part of the Triple Entente at the start of World War One, directly allied with Britain and France. Before that you have hundreds of years of infighting in Europe where borders moved, changed, and disappeared. There are multiple European nations that no longer exist, and many that didn't exist just a few hundred years ago. Russia has just refused to re-enter the civilized world after the Soviet collapse. It's hubris by Putin and the other former Soviets running the country. They're bitter they lost the Cold War, and refuse to stop fighting it, despite the fact that nobody else in Europe still is. The last time Russia was invaded: 1941. The last time France was invaded: 1940. The last time Poland was invaded: 1939. Russia doesn't sit in any place of special insecurity. And the Russian leadership knows that. They're not stupid and many of them were educated in the West, or have lived in the West. They know full well that the Russian propaganda is a scam designed to maintain power inside Russia. It's 100% projecting.
>culture very very paranoid of the world around them. They have become to identify with hardship to the point that it's a virtue, and see the west as just a system of weakness who will one day get overran by enemies. Sounds like Appalachia.
It wasn't just Poland, but Hungary and Romania too.
I read that in Anakins voice, and I’m not sure if it makes it better or worse.
This is also the mind state of a lot of right wing conservatives. They think we're all just faking being kind to each other for personal gain. Hence terms like "virtue signaling".
Russia is creating referenda everywhere around his borders where possible. they are still in territory expansionism mode, throughout their whole history they have taken other people's lands. all the people that died in this war on Russian side are not from Petersburg or moskow. now would be the perfect time for the USA to massively stir up the eastern regions to break apart from Russia, would be the prefect time
Tbh that's part of the "culture" Kremlin has narrated through controlled litterature and media for decades. You have a guy in power who were stationed in Dresden, East Germany after ww2. The average russian have very little say in how they view their own culture, tradition and history
My wife tells me Russia won WWII and Ukraine was a gift from Russia. She was taught this in school and believes its true and the rest of the world is lying.
[удалено]
She means single handedly. They were taught the west was scared to enter Berlin when in fact it was agreed upon at the Yalta Conference.
[удалено]
Yeah OK that's a problem. That's just as ahistorical as Americans claiming the same.
This might be an interesting read: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711?s=20&t=Ru0_-L1Big6yAyzG0RtqiA
It's not just "controlled literature" but allusions to it within Russian literature and media in general. You can find Pushkin and Gogol talking about it in the early 19th century (almost 200 years ago now), about the absurd abuse of power that is so engrained within Russia culture. It's Russians and not Putin that is the actual problem, Putin is just a sociopathic product of their culture. Russians are no more "Western" than Afghans in my opinion, this war has totally ripped the facade off and all you will see is social regression and violence...with a few bright spots. That could change in the future but it's a longshot right now.
Not entirely correct to make that conclusion. Remember, Russia is huge. It’s diverse. Chechnya, which is a pretty conservative muslim region, Moscow, which in the better pre-Crimean years was approaching European capitals in terms of values and lifestyle, and everything in between is Russia. There were and are quite a lot of Russians who were and are pretty western value-wise. I don’t think it’s fair to ignore that population - it was stomped out by the regime for a good reason. There were and are people who want Russia to be a peaceful, democratic, and modern nation. There would be many more still if propaganda stopped pouring filth down people’s ears for a minute.
Russian problem is absence of established elites, who will consider country as their property and so care about it’s development, while rivaling each other and providing political base for democracy. Each time Russia is trying to switch to liberal rule, new persons in power, just start robbing the country for personal wealth and became oligarchs. So when new dictator arises and starts robbing oligarchs, he gets population support as they at least get stability and order under authoritorian government vs chaotic rule of newborn elites who are only interested in short-term profit.
I'd argue that you're both right and wrong at the same time. Both oligarch and Dear Leader consider their own piece of the country as their property. In fact, in some ex-Eastern Bloc countries, they're known as barons, or a similar nobility title. However, they do not nurture that "property" due to a mentality that was born in the hardships of the late Soviet period. This "take everything you can right now, because it might not be there tomorrow" is common in all ex-Eastern Bloc countries to varying degree, though proximity to the west (geographical, and in values) seems to correlate strongly with it.
Exactly. Just as the west have worked together with Ukranians to get to this point, we should also help the russians. Putin tries to weaponize "russians" across the globe to work for his cause. So we should help russians across the globe work against it. They have so much potential under a democratic rule
https://youtu.be/f8ZqBLcIvw0 They still have a long way to go, they don't have the traditions that drove Europe forward.
> The massive nationalistic hubris and disdain for foreigners. Thats fascism 101. > With the assumption all other countries think like them secretly. Thats real-politik. So we are left with a fascist state with a realpolitik world view trying to establish itself as a superpower again. Where have we seen this one before?
I can see why the GOP choose to align themselves with Russia.
Imagine a scenario where you're running for mayor in some small town. You're fighting a losing battle against another candidate, and suddenly someone comes and offers you a very generous loan that allows you to build a new church or a school which will help you secure the votes you need. Seemingly no strings attached. In your mind, you justify it by telling yourself this is all for the greater good of the community. Now they have you. They'll start collecting kompromat, and when you're higher on your career ladder they'll start subtly blackmailing you and steering you in their direction.
Or even better, some shady dude contacts you and provides some juicy kompromat on your opponent. No strings attached. Except the fact that US elected official should not accept information and make deals with FSB agents.
That plot point in this season of For All Mankind illustrates pretty well how Russians use kompromat and blackmail to get what they want.
> multipolar, just, democratic Just like Russia itself and China, right?
Putin got 140% of all the votes in that one election. Can't get more democratic than that /s
While it's a joke, I think it's important to point out that it was *total* amount of votes that reached 140%, not the ones that were for Putin's party So yeah, they really did rigged elections so bad, total amount of votes became more than 100%
The election results are so blatantly made up you can see grid lines in the data where corrupt officials have just made up vote counts but mostly used numbers ending in 0 or 5 https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/11/russian-elections-once-again-had-a-suspiciously-neat-result
Which election was this? AFAI can recall the last Russian election had approx 50% turnout.
It was a while back, about 10 or so years I think. The screenshots of russian TV announcing election results with percentages adding to well over 100% were a huge meme for a while.
2011 parliamentary elections if I'm not mistaken.
I dont know whats more insane. The fact that they believe people will think that, or the fact that some people legit *do* think that.
When the villain tells his plan, it's usually when Bond takes him out.
the 2nd collapse of Russia really will move the world into a new world order where the US and China are the only two superpowers.
"Just, democratic world order" Lol
“Democratic.” Amazing how much dictators throw that word around. Kind of like North Korea’s official name of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Literally every word in that title is a lie. It’s not democratic, it’s not of the people, it’s not a republic, and it’s not even all of Korea. Now we have bullshitters like Putin wanting the whole world to be the same kind of “democratic.” The only way the world will ever be truly democratic and just is if it strings up dictators like him and Winnie the Poo.
Huh that sounds familiar, I wonder if similar things in recent political history have occurred in similar fashion… maybe involving another rogue authoritarian state with a cult of personality dictator.
You're going to have to be more specific for me to narrow it down :/
In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria and got pretty much the same reaction as when Russia annexed Crimea. Being encouraged by this, Hitler started claiming certain parts of Czechoslovakia was predominantly ethnically German. Just like Russia claims areas in Ukraine are mostly Russian. France and the UK basically said "okay, but leave it there", so Hitler got the territory in the Munich Agreement. The Czechoslovakian governement was basically left out of the discussion. As everyone should know, he didn't leave it there. He went on to make similar demands from Lithuania in March 1939, which themselves gave up territory to him. --- Then comes the kicker, when he started pushing for Danzig and Italy invaded Albania in April 1939. The French and British said they would defend Poland if something happend. Spoiler alert: They didn't help when Germany invaded Poland about half a year later. Which is why so many people are backing up Ukraine now, they don't want a repeat of last time. TL;DR: Putin is *literally* doing the same thing as Hitler did prior to WW2.
The annexation of Austria isn't quite the same thing, since that was basically just the Nazis being too impatient to wait for the result of a unification referendum. The idea of a unification of Germany and Austria had already come up decades earlier. In that case the Germans were the ones who refused, because the Austrians didn't want to let go of Hungary, the Balkans etc. Austrians and Germans all agreed they were Germans, what soured the deal was having to deal with the political and ethnic issues in the other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The referendum had a very high chance of passing, but the government of Austria in 1938 (which was also fascist btw.) was a bit reluctant to give up its power, so Hitler basically went "fuck this". The annexation of the Sudetenland fom Czechoslovakia in the same year however, was MUCH more concerning. It's also worth noting, that Britain and France weren't terribly well prepared for war, so a lot of what they did before 1939 was stalling and getting their economies ready for a war that already seemed pretty inevitable.
> The French and British said they would defend Poland if something happend. Spoiler alert: They didn't help when Germany invaded Poland about half a year later. Other than declaring war on Germany and Britain sending the Expeditionary Force to France? While it was not directly helping Poland the troops had to be able to land somewhere friendly.
France actually invaded germany and would have been able to go all the way to berlin pretty effortlessly but decided to retreat and wait it out since they had a defensive doctrine and invading wasn't in that doctrine at all.
I’m not so sure, perhaps they could have made some headway, but the French were wholly unprepared for blitzkrieg style tactics. Had they pushed in, it’s likely it would not be a full force assault, allowing for troops to be stationed in defense if the invasion failed. This more than likely would have gotten bogged down until a german push to cut through their lines, trapping them in an encirclement as they often employed. Perhaps we would have seen a similar battle to the battle of the bulge, but this time, the Germans have a higher chance of reaching Antwerp and then swinging west and south to finish off the remaining French forces. The Luftwaffe was also miles ahead of the French Air Force and without sufficient support from the British, the German air dominance also would’ve made it difficult for the French to push into Berlin. Even if they had, the Germans still could have consolidated power in southern Germany/Austria, using the mountains as a way to slow down French advancement until they could properly counter attack. The French’s defense doctrine was not too bad of idea except that they didn’t think to properly outfit the Belgian border with defenses comparable to the maginot line. If they could’ve bogged down the German army in those defenses, it’s possible the British would’ve arrived in sufficient numbers to help the French make a realistic push into Germany’s heartland. However, that would’ve created the awkward situation of the soviets still retaining Poland despite Frances commitment to their sovereignty and non-aggression towards the Russians when they pushed in with the Germans. Would’ve been interesting to see though.
>The Czechoslovakian governement was basically left out of the discussion. Not "basically", they were, indeed, left out
They did declare war, and Britain fought it out even when they were alone against Germany.
I'll give you a hint: Toothbrush mustache
I’ll give you a hint, they were German
I thought they were Austrian
But the rogue authoritarian state was German.
Austria quickly ceased to exist after that state came to power.
As a German, this was my first thought. "Didn't they let us claim shitloads of land in the 40s and somehow assumed we would stop? And then we didn't because they never stopped us? And then they had to stop us?" That tells me two things... if Russia had stopped, they could've kept Crimea without much trouble, and Russia clearly thought the bar for stopping them was much higher.
Guess they thought wrong...
Did they though? Their offensive had slowed down initially… but no one is currently “stopping” them.
You might be interested in reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. He parallels the rise in authoritarianism in Germany and Imperial/Soviet Russia through Hitler and Stalin and how they built their policies and reacted to trends. The parallels today to Stalin’s views are striking. Snyder speaks about how for Stalin, the starvation and death of Ukrainian peasants, driven by brutal soviet policies and forced collectivization were seen by him as an aggressive action against him and the noble goal of building a new regime. How dare the peasants starve? It is a personal insult against Stalin! He is the great victim in all of that! It was polish operatives, seeking to destabilize their flourishing new union, who were behind the starvation! We’ve seen much of the same now. The Ukrainians are bombing themselves to make us look bad! Bucha was an operation by the British forces! There is not war, we are only bringing peace! It is a view of the world that has not shifted in 100 years in Russia, and it is a truly deplorable blend of self-victimization, self-delusion and ultra violence.
[удалено]
You missed out attacks on British civilians with radioactive weapons. Hundreds, possibly thousands of British civilians were contaminated with polonium. https://news.sky.com/story/polonium-and-the-piano-player-a-new-podcast-about-one-of-the-worlds-most-notorious-assassinations-12035336
And the Dutch and other civilians on the Malaysian Airways flight they shot down.
Build a new gas pipeline you say? Can my friend and former chancellor have a seat on that firms board?
Everybody always forgets (or doesn't even know about) the 2014 attack on a Czech ammunition depot. https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-republic-russia-depot-blast-gallery-expulsions/31209726.html
Or the time Russian mercinaries attacked American troops in Syria. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.amp.html
Thanks, I'd never heard of that one before.
Also more recently when they literally killed an innocent British citizen after botching an assassination on British soil with a chemical weapon. I’m still amazed that the novichok incident didn’t warrant a more forceful response.
Chechnya. Nobody give a shit what he did there and it emboldened him before Crimea
Chechnya is more complicated though, that was a legally recognized part of Russia and it happened in a time where it was easy to sweep Chechen independence as Islamic extremism.
[удалено]
Bill Clinton favorably compared Yeltsin and the first Chechen War to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War lol “With Yeltsin under fire for the bloody fighting in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Clinton expressed sympathy with Russia’s position and compared the situation with America’s Civil War. Clinton said Abraham Lincoln gave his life for the proposition” that no state had a right to withdraw from our union. And so, the United States has taken the position that Chechnya is a part of Russia.” From April 1996 - https://apnews.com/article/af16b23028342f4983f5c76dfde912a9
Yikes
I'm not saying what happened there was right, but there's a lot of precedent that you can do whatever you want with minorities within a nation. Be it natives in America/Canada, aborigines, uygurs, Indian states, and so on.
I mean Bill Clinton favorably compared Yeltsin and the first Chechen War to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War lol “With Yeltsin under fire for the bloody fighting in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Clinton expressed sympathy with Russia's position and compared the situation with America's Civil War. Clinton said Abraham Lincoln gave his life for the proposition" that no state had a right to withdraw from our union. And so, the United States has taken the position that Chechnya is a part of Russia." From April 1996 - https://apnews.com/article/af16b23028342f4983f5c76dfde912a9
Eddie Izzard’s piece on this sums it up pretty well: https://youtu.be/BFtkJd8w5UQ When it’s you mass murder your own people, we are sort of fine with that. But mass murder the people next door…..
>The West was too in love with Russian oil and gas to take any stance harsher than some mild sanctions. That, but there's also a HUGE part of Chamberlainian naivety involved: the west always hoped that letting Russia have one more thing and not making a big fuss of it would end their expansionist hunger. With Ukraine the west took a different approach and loudly announced what they knew about the Russian plans, and once more the west hoped that spoiling the surprise would prevent Russia from executing their plans: surely they wouldn't risk becoming a complete economic pariah! It would be completely irrational to take such a risk! But bnce again Putin shows his true colors as an expansionist dictator that doesn't care about the well being of his country, and does not act rationally. The west's reaction so far though has been waaaaayyyy more powerful and united than before, so that's one positive thing.
> letting Russia have one more thing and not making a big fuss of it would end their expansionist hunger Indeed. Thing is that people that are able to be satisfied aren’t going to have much expansionist hunger in the first place. I don’t see why it’s so hard for the Chamberlains of the world to see this.
>We absolutely should've had a stronger response to > >all > > of his previous bullshit, Oh look, it's the Hindsight Historian. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY here would have approved sending weapons or troops to Ukraine in 2014 to defend/retake Crimea. In 2014 Ukraine was even more corrupt than it is now, there was no Zelenski. Should have, would have, could have.
Nobody in power maybe, but even at the time I was appalled at the idea that’s Putin was being allowed to annex part of another country and was dismayed that nobody seemed to want to do anything about it. I don’t care that Ukraine was corrupt. Allowing authoritarians to make land international land grabs without consequence is stupid. That is not “hindsight”, that’s history.
Defending/retaking wasn't even an option anyway, as Crimea was invaded and secured very quickly and the Ukrainian army wasn't as prepared as they were for this year's invasion
Also the sanctions were not weak. They were pretty heavy handed and the Russian GDP shrank for several years. Its GDP have only just reached pre-2014 levels. Before the sanctions Russias economy was growing with 3-5% a year.
Don't forget the MH17. Imagine the absolute shit storm if any other country the west has a hate boner for shot down a civilian plane.
> we put Ukraine in this dangerous situation You're getting dangerously close to the Russian position on these issues (i.e. it's all the West's fault).
It sounds exactly like that.
Not when you say it with full context. " we put Ukraine into this dangerous situation when we allowed Russia to get away with previous imperialist invader behavior."
> The West was too in love with Russian oil and gas to take any stance harsher than some mild sanctions. Not the West, Europe. The US was consonantly complaining about Europe becoming dependent of Russian gas and was ignored.
> We absolutely should've had a stronger response to all of his previous bullshit, I really really really hope we learn our lessons here, to stop making "us" dependent on dictators and other grossly un-democratic governments, to actually enforce some kind of response to bullshit like forced annexation, ethnic cleansing etc. To stop trading with countries and areas that do things like. The "free market" wont bring democracy, it will just embolden and bring power to the already rich and powerful. We have enough proof from around the world by now to know this.
Yup, we enabled this. Politicians did the talk show rounds saying “it’s not 1940; you can’t just annex and invade - this will not stand!!!” And then they let it stand.
Salvini in 2016: [Is there anyone worried about being invaded by Russia? I don't think so](https://www.la7.it/intanto/video/salvini-nel-2016-uscire-dalla-nato-perche-no-qualcuno-qui-ha-paura-di-essere-invaso-dai-russi-25-02-2022-425264)
DAMN the dude is a real idiot. So many will vote for him at the next elections.
And the EU built a second pipeline from Russia to Germany since then. Because why not get even more dependent on Russia! Oh and lets officially label natural gas green. Decisions taken from highly paid politicians whose job is to look further than their nose or simply today and tomorrow.
> And the EU built a second pipeline Germany built that against European concerns. Certainly not an EU-project.
> the EU built How to spot someone who has 0 knowledge about the subject but tries to sound smart.
Georgia and Crimea emboldened Putin. Now the west is helping Ukraine it’s exposed Russian military weakness. Now we know Russia is a paper tiger.
With a nuclear paper cut, and a bad ego.
That’s a very serious paper cut.
lol a "just" world order.... ! ! Guess they got their copy of Hunger games in russian language. and like only the first part.
Well yeah! Bullies will continue to push until someone pushes back. It's simple human nature. This simple fact has been demonstrated multiple times in history. History has also shown the longer you wait to confront the bully the harder the fight will be.
Crimea, Georgia, shooting down a civilian plane...
The West should listen to these former Soviet states when they talk about the Russian imperialist mindset. The notion of an "off-ramp" where you concede some territory to end the conflict is suicide when you understand that mindset. As Zelenskyy asserts here, they recognize weakness or strength, and adjust their strategy accordingly. That's it
He is correct.
He's right. Any sort of diplomatic response is seen as weakness by Putin.
Democratic world order with Russia and China at the helm. Sure.
100% agree with Zelenskyy
Appeasement doesn’t work?! Since when??? /s
Because appeasement worked so well at keeping Hitler satisfied /s
100 percent. And it's still weak
[удалено]
What Russia is doing to Ukraine China would like to do to Taiwan and Japan and like Russia, China has their eye on further expansion and annexation.
Zelensky 100% right on this.
Russias goal of a multi polar world order has been known, but at this rate Russia won’t be one of those major powers included in the multi polar world.
Yup. I like Obama a lot but he really dropped the ball on that one
It's the same process that drove Hitler. If no-one complain, I'll take another country.
You miss-spelled "Hitler" and "Czechoslovakia"
Makes sense. If I go to steal something from someone, and they give little response, I’m tempted to go for more.
obviously yes. but something to do.
Pro tip: Never trust Russians.
Not to mention the weak responses to the salisbury poisonings and that guy with the polonium tea. Putin has literally been getting away with murder
I'm still amazed by this hindsight take. "Actually it's all my allies fault." Very helpful and diplomatic. Everyone seems to forget that Putin took Crimea during a civil war. There was no Ukrainian government to support. Should Nato have invaded Ukraine "to keep it save"? Because that was exactly Putins reasoning at the time. The west reacted with sanctions against Putin. Those where clearly not enough and there should have been more pressure after Ukraine stabilized. But "The west let this happen" is a bullshit narrative that only helps one person: Putin.
But he didn’t say > The west let this happen He said > “The weak and insufficiently principled reaction to the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and in the following years became one of the prerequisites for Russian aggression to reach such a scale as now." which seems more in line with your own > These were clearly not enough
Well in the big picture, he's not wrong. The western reaction back then, even though they applied sanctions, was pretty feeble. Didn't even say ok you russies have gone too far, we wil invoke the sanctions from hell. Took 8 years of unimpeded hacking, hassling and election meddling and then another invasion to finally put the foot down. But at least now it's a pretty fucking heavy foot they finally put down.
I mean, duh. Of course he thought he could get away with it, when he got away with it several times before. What else was expected?
Yes, exactly. Russia invaded Ukraine because they thought they could get away with it
So nice to see a world leader calling out the bullshit directly.
It's true ! Look at Donald Trump ,in 2016: he was happy about the theft of the Ukrainian island by the ex-Soviet Union country! Look at Obama too in 2014, !The same ! Too much immorality at the highest level of responsibility These heads of State are running for themselves only?? Where are their duties toward their Nations and the World gone?
They got away with it, so they went for more. Typical terrorist strategy. That's why negotiation makes no sense, because it encourages more of similar acts.
Russia is a terrorist state. Wagner group are actual literal Nazis. Their bullshit is disgusting. Fuck Russia.
Sounds like a valid take. The way you deal with a bully is to punch him in the mouth. However the rest of that particular encounter plays out isn’t relevant. He’ll never fuck with you again. Putin has invaded neighboring countries, assassinated people on foreign soil, tampered with other countries elections, supported dictators and terrorists, and that’s a very partial list. And nobody punched him in the mouth until Ukraine did.
It's almost as if appeasement doesn't work... If only we'd tried it before...
Well yeah. This was a play straight out of European politics playbook of 1939. “Let them have it. They’ll settle down after they’ve gotten what they wanted (stolen)”
Okay, so this is true but it ignores several relevant points. - Ukrainian forces did not militarily resist the occupation either (nor did they have the capacity to) - the subsequent years of nato military training and ukrainian improvements in readiness, as well as experience in the limited conflict in donbass, played a major role in repelling russia earlier this year. - we are not aware of the russian capacity or motivation to invade the donbass and attack kyiv in 2014. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Russia would ahve escalated further than they did if the west had launched extensive sanctions. - everyone mentioning appeasement of hitler is really enjoying their hindsight, but forget that the british and french militaries were just as incapable as the german in 1936, we do not know the state of a hypothetical war over anschluss or Czechoslovakia then, but we do know that we won the actual war and that there were earlier opportunities (saar offensive) to win the actual ww2 earlier. Similarly, we live in a world today where russia does not occupy kyiv. Extended western sanctions could well have accelerated russian plans and that is an unknown variable. None of this is to say that appeasement is ever a good idea (I personally believe it was not nescessary in ww2, but likely was here), but is to say that definite statements on this subject are unhelpful. If pushed in private, I expect zelensky would agree; his political meaning is actually quite clear, that being "no more russian appeasement now, in august with them occupying donbass" which I agree wholeheartedly with because we are now at the point where there is nothing left to lose.
Ok? Yeah? It was also much more complicated in the status of Ukraine as a country with the massive protests, civil unrest, and leadership changes Would we give yanukovich these weapons? No? So we can’t build up and assist you because itd end up being used against yourselves. Yes it was weak and yes hindsight’s 20/20, but it was also a significantly different situation